TREDYFFRIN — Stephen T. Zarrilli is the new president and chief executive of Safeguard Scientifics.

Previously, he was chief financial officer for Safeguard, a publicly traded company that Pete Musser, a Chester County entrepreneurial legend, started 60 years ago.

Safeguard provides growth capital and operational support to entrepreneurial and innovative life sciences and technology companies.

Zarrilli joined Safeguard in 2008 as chief financial officer and assumed his new position late last year.

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Spearheading the financial side of Safeguard, at first, was a perfect way for the now 51-year-old Malvern resident to prepare for the chief executive slot.

“I am familiar with this business from the ground up,” Zarrilli said in an interview last week. “I helped my predecessor, Peter Boni, rebuild the company. Knowing what I did, the transition to CEO from CFO was very smooth and allows for a rapid integration of new ideas.”

Boni retired Nov. 1 and is now Safeguard’s CEO emeritus and a senior advisor.

When Zarrilli joined Safeguard four years ago, the company had “a small amount of cash and a lot of debt,” he explained. “We needed the opposite to be true. In four years, Pete and I and others came up with tactics and strategies to rebuild our financial footing.”

Interestingly, he says the “Great Recession” that began, officially, in 2008, helped Safeguard.

“We had to be myopically focused on controlling costs,” Zarrilli asserted. “A lot of our debt was publicly traded, so we reacquired that debt at substantial discounts — about 30 percent, to be exact. And the institutional investors who held that debt had to get out of these assets to create liquidity for other investments.”

Also, Zarrilli went on to say, Safeguard sold a few companies right before the U.S. economy tumbled, “allowing us to save money on debt repayment and also to invest in younger companies with more favorable valuations. Thus our entry point was significantly less than what we would have paid in a bull market.”

Since 2006, Safeguard’s avowed focus has been on life sciences and technology companies, with an emphasis on health care diagnostics and devices, specialty pharmaceutical companies, health care digital platforms and new media operations.

The 17 companies in which it’s invested are mostly located between Boston and Washington, D.C., Zarrilli explained. The company has no international holdings, though some companies in which it is invested have customers in international markets.

Regarding the fiscal cliff, Safeguard was affected most by its depressed stock price.

“We weren’t in a unique scenario,” he said. “A lot of companies were in our shoes. The bungee jump over the cliff will avert another recession and propel the economy to further growth. We can then a position a couple of our companies for exit, which means that we’ll sell them to another financial buyer or strategic investor.”

Asked about the effect of the Affordable Care Act on overall health care investment, Zarrilli responded, “The new health care law requires more investment in how we deliver health care and how we use treatments and services in a much more efficient manner. Now that most Medicare fees to doctors won’t be reduced, this will mean more stable growth for Safeguard.”

Zarrilli and Safeguard go back a ways. In an interesting twist of fate, Zarrilli in the 1990s persuaded Safeguard to invest $10 million in US Interactive, a company he started in 1994. A strategic digital marketing firm, US Interactive went public in 1999 and has since moved to Cupertino, Calif.

He also served as chief executive of Concellera Software Inc. and orchestrated sale of its proprietary technology to Hewlett Packard. And he spent more than a decade at Deloitte, a major U.S. accounting firm, where he helped develop an emerging business practice in Philadelphia.

Though Pete Musser hasn’t been involved in day-to-day operations of Safeguard for some time, Zarrilli said that he and the 84-year-old Musser enjoy a “terrific relationship.”

Separately, late last week Safeguard announced that it is investing $10 million as part of a larger $28 million financing for Crescendo Bioscience, a South San Francisco, Calif.-based molecular diagnostics company focused on rheumatology.

Crescendo will use the proceeds to further expand sales and clinical development for its Vectra DA, the first and only multi-biomarker blood test for rheumatoid arthritis or RA, a debilitating immune system disease. This test helps physicians make more informed treatment decision about RA.